[env-trinity] State Vetoes Pajaro Water Grant

[Tom Stokely]

 I question the "wasting of water to the sea" and it's hard to imagine that additional pumping from the Delta is going to be a good thing for the Delta.

TS

STATE FUNDING ISSUES:
State vetoes P.V. water agency grant; Officials hope setback doesn't affect construction of freshwater pipeline
Santa Cruz Sentinel - 4/22/05
By Tom Ragan, staff writer
 

WATSONVILLE - The state gave the water management agency here some bad news this week. 

 

It's not getting $4 million in grant money to help build its $48 million recycling project, which is expected to deliver 4,000 acre feet of water per year to coastal farmers whose wells have been inundated by saltwater. 

 

The reason for the rejection: The Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency has not yet built its 23-mile freshwater pipeline, a piece of collateral that the agency was banking on. 

 

Word came from the California Water Resources Control Board in Sacramento on Thursday. 

 

Although the recycling project is not in jeopardy, water management agency officials say, the news was somewhat of a setback. The agency is trying to add water to the valley's dwindling aquifers, brought on by a combination of an ever-growing Watsonville and a thriving agricultural industry. 

 

In order to qualify for the state Proposition 50 funds, water districts across Northern California vying for a piece of the $16.8 million pot had to prove two things: their water projects were conserving water and they were somehow adding water to the Sacramento River Delta or lessening their dependence on it. 

 

Tom Mays, spokesman for the state's water board, said the Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency met only one of two requirements in its bid for the maximum $4 million. While the agency's recycling project, scheduled to go on-line in 2007, will save water that would have been lost to sea, it would only indirectly impact the Sacramento River Delta. 

 

The agency was hoping its proposed $100 million pipeline, scheduled to be in-use by 2010, would convince the state water board that water in the Delta would be saved in due time. 

 

But the state couldn't consider it because the pipeline has not been built, Mays said. 

 

"The logic is confounding," said McNiesh. "In the long run, once the pipeline is built, we won't have to take 4,000 acre feet from the Delta ... but the state's not considering the future. It's only dealing with the here and now." 

 

But even the future of the pipeline is uncertain, McNiesh admits. 

 

Farmers who oppose it have filed five lawsuits in Santa Cruz County Superior Court, saying its financing is unconstitutional - a series of water fee hikes that the lawsuits are claiming are tax increases and therefore should have been approved by a special election. 

 

But the litigation hasn't stopped the recycling project, McNiesh said, adding much of the funding has already been secured and will depend on a combination of more state and federal funds along with millions of dollars in revenues produced by the agency's fee hikes, which will increase to as much as $220 per acre foot by 2010. 

 

Right now, the current rate per acre foot is $160. 

 

An acre foot of water is generally one foot of water deep spread out across a football field. Generally, farmers use one acre foot of water per year for two acres of crops, but some crops take a little more, others a little less. #

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2005/April/22/local/stories/06local.htm

 
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